


new grooves (carve 'em into your skin)

by mzanthropist



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 15:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4396676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mzanthropist/pseuds/mzanthropist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a genetically modified dinosaur single-handedly presses pause on her life, Claire:</p>
<p>Confronts some truths;<br/>Finds a hobby;<br/>Strikes up a new (sort of) friendship;<br/>Becomes a dog owner; and<br/>Gets a second kiss.</p>
<p>In that order.<br/> <br/><em>Or how the Indominus rex was actually a blessing in disguise.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	new grooves (carve 'em into your skin)

_Dear ___________:_

_I wish to formally notify you that I am resigning from my position as Senior Assets Manager of Jurassic World. My last day of employment will be ___________ as per my obligations under the terms of my employment contract._

_I appreciate all of the opportunities and professional support given to me during my tenure at Masrani Global Corporation. It has truly been a remarkable and enjoyable ___________ years, and I wish you and the company all the success in the future._

_If I can be of any assistance during this transition, please let me know. I would be more than happy to lend my services wherever they are needed._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Claire Elizabeth Dearing_

 

_\--_

 

She remembers drafting that letter, has a surprisingly vivid recollection of sitting hunched over her laptop at two in the morning (twelve hours after Simon had called to offer his hearty congratulations, his enthusiastic “You’re hired!” still ringing in her ears), clacking away at the keyboard as some inane infomercial played in the background, a mug of chamomile tea growing cold at her elbow.

 

It hadn’t been hubris or an inflated ego that had compelled Claire to write the letter when she had. As far as she knew, lucrative offers weren’t skulking in the shadows somewhere, waiting to jump her when she least expected it, seducing her with six-figure salaries and too-good-to-be-true benefits. Simon had already been taking a gamble by hiring her.

 

No, it had simply been part of a contingency plan (because preparing for worst-case scenarios is what Claire does best) should Simon’s vision for Jurassic World turn out to be a complete nonstarter. Not that she’d lacked faith in the venture.

 

(Okay, she’d had her doubts. But given the lousy track record of its predecessor, who wouldn’t?)

 

Nearly a decade later, it’s the first thing to catch her eye whenever she fires up her laptop (the file sits in the top-right corner of her desktop, right beneath the date and time), but in all that time, the letter’s had little more to do than idly take up space on her cramped hard drive. Because up until recently, Claire hadn't had any reason to give it a second look, resignation having been the furthest thing from her mind.

 

Right out of the gate, Jurassic World had been a massive success. It dominated the theme park scene, eroding the lustre of long-established (and almost institutional) fixtures in the industry, and chasing out would-be competitors before they could even wedge a foothold in the market. Fairytales and magic simply had nothing on mammoth should-be-extinct beasts – particularly the ones with razor-sharp claws, teeth, _whatever_ and a predilection for blood.

 

Also, she was _really_ good at her job (even Lowery had begrudgingly conceded this) – enjoyed it, even – and knew with absolute certainty that Masrani Corp’s was the corporate ladder she wanted to climb.

 

But despite all this, the masochist in her that likes to imagine (and then play on repeat) failure and catastrophe prevents her from getting rid of the letter altogether. (She’s fished it out of the trash on more than one occasion.) So it’s continues to sit there, biding its time, game and willing.

 

And it'd be so _easy_ to throw it into play, just a matter of filling in the blanks ( _Mr. David Masrani_ \- the younger Masrani brother is sitting as interim CEO; _January 19, 2015_ ; _nine_ – good Lord, has she really been doing this for that long?), printing and signing.

 

She thinks she might go through with it.

 

And she almost does.

 

On impulse, she fills in the blanks ( _Date Modified: Jan 5, 2015, 2:01 AM_ ), silence and a half-empty bottle of wine her only company. She prints the letter with just enough ink to spare (her name is a bit faded but still legible), then signs it. The signature is a wobbly, unfamiliar scrawl that, much to her displeasure, nearly runs off the page. She contemplates printing off another copy.

 

(She never does. The first and only copy sits in her printer’s out tray for two weeks before being relegated to the recycling.)

 

\--

 

Handing in that letter would’ve been giving up. Worse, it’s tantamount to washing her hands of the role she’d played in all of this, running from her mistakes and misdeeds with her tail between her legs. Claire may run from a lot of things – family obligations, ex-Navy SEALs in board shorts, a test tube dinosaur with incisors sharp enough to gut an elephant with a snap of her jaw – but running from this is unthinkable, a non-option if there ever was one.

 

Even just _contemplating_ the possibility of tendering her resignation feels like an admission of defeat. And Claire has never been known to quit anything – with the exception of tequila and cigarettes. So no, she doesn’t ( _won’t_ ) resign. She’s determined to help fix this, make it right ( _somehow_ ), and there’s no time to waste on half-formed whims and Mad Libbed resignation letters.

 

But before she has a chance to so much as organize her thoughts and draw up a plan, she’s placed on a mandatory leave of absence.

 

“There’s only so much a park operations manager can do right now,” David explains to her. (He's a near carbon copy of his older brother - same rich baritone and kind brown eyes. The only discernable difference is the conspicuous lack of mischief lighting his eyes and lacing his words.) Sensing that a strongly worded objection is in his near future, he hastily adds, “There will be plenty for you to do once you get back, Claire. John Hammond’s dream, it lives on. What happened with the Indominus, as unfortunate as it was, is just a—” he gesticulates helplessly, grasping for the appropriate word “—setback. One which must be laid to rest before we can move forward. And I promise, once this fiasco has blown over and we're back on track, you’ll be the first call I make.”

 

While the assurance does little to mollify her (it’s nothing more than a platitude meant to keep her on her leash), Claire can’t really disagree. The incident with the Indominus rex (referred to as everything from _The Incident_ to _DinoGate_ to _Indominus Wreck_ ) is unsurprisingly a nightmare from PR hell (and Disney’s wet dream – she can see its new slogan now: _Disney Parks – The Place Where Dreams Come True and You Won’t Get Eaten_ ). Thankfully, the Masrani PR department had been on the ball, shifting into damage control and firing on all cylinders even before the first ferry had set sail for the mainland. Their handling of the situation is textbook - deft and without all the frenzied hoopla that typically follows, every imaginable angle covered and no stone left unturned - and whatever contribution Claire could make to their efforts is minimal at best (a generous assessment) and nonexistent at worst ( _much_  closer to the truth).

 

(She’s an architect at heart, always has been. She implements and turns into reality the ideas in her head, designing and building from nothing. She’s never known or witnessed true demolition, never mind dealt with its fallout. On some abstract, intellectual level she understands the necessity for it – you can’t rebuild on rubble and debris after all. But the actual practice of clearing a mess, of cleaning up, is something altogether different. Something that most definitely is _not_ her forte.)

 

All Claire can do is observe from a distance, an unexpectedly exhausting thing to do. The non-stop hustle isn't so draining when you're at the centre of the action and caught up in all the activity (the gravity of the situation grounds you and the adrenaline-induced tunnel vision is pretty handy in crisis management situations). But watching it all play out with not even a toe in the pandemonium? It just makes her head spin.

 

She's deadwood for once, useless and in the way. It's strange and disquieting.

 

\--

 

As soon as she’s given her official statement and sat down for a handful of interviews (“People want to know the woman behind the burning flare, Claire.”), she’s shuttled off to the Venice Beach apartment that has, up until now anyway, been more of a second source of income than a home.

 

Thankfully, either the last subletter had been a compulsive cleaner or Karen had had a cleaning service come by – Claire’s leaning towards the latter – because the apartment is spotless and smells freshly aired when she steps into it for the first time in six months.

 

Officially, she’s on administrative leave, ostensibly to deal with whatever trauma might manifest as a result of a showdown with a fifty-foot-long genetically modified monstrosity.

 

Masrani Corp suggests that she “speak to someone”, code for “get yourself a therapist pronto because having the face of this PR disaster go batshit crazy is most certainly not an option”. But it’s her sister’s plea – high and tight with worry – that gets her to pick a name from the list of recommended mental health professionals.

 

She goes just once, in the week following her return stateside, to see a woman with degrees so numerous that an entire wall in her office serves as a shrine to them.

 

The therapist (“Evelyn," she says, hand extended and nose scrunching self-deprecatingly. "Dr. Weinstein sounds so stuffy.") is all amiable professionalism, antiquated Rolodex and understated Louboutins. For a moment, Claire thinks she may have lucked out.

 

She discovers, less than fifteen minutes later, that she is not so lucky after all. Because as soon as the pleasantries are exchanged, small talk concluded and the session begins in earnest, Evelyn shoots to hell whatever goodwill and semblance of competence she’d had going for herself by informing Claire, “You can’t expect your life to be the same as it was before,” as if her life was now a two-part event: _Before Indominus rex_ and _After Indominus rex_.

 

Claire remembers having to physically restrain herself from rolling her eyes (instead, her teeth clamp the inside of her cheek _hard_ ) lest she give her annoyance away. Because _well yeah_. She isn’t so deluded to think that the person she was then is who she is now. She’s changed (for better or for worse) and she has enough self-awareness to recognize this, thank you very much.

 

(And if there’s something she hates more than being told what she already knows, it’s _paying_ someone to do it.)

 

It's a strike against Evelyn, but not a fatal one. For all Claire knew, the other woman may've just been having an off-day, already chiding herself for letting something so foolish - not to mention  _banal_  - slip through her filter. Claire was no stranger to this herself after all. But no matter how willing she is to simply discount the comment, catalogue it as an anomaly and give Evelyn the benefit of the doubt, what she can't turn a blind eye to is the fact that she spends the duration of the hour-long session feeling like a victim, a casualty of corporate greed and scientific intemperance. She can't pretend it doesn't bother her because that's not what she is. Far from it.

 

This is how she sees it: she'd lived through something, had come out the other side of a genuine life-or-death experience.

 

So what she is, if anything, is a _survivor_.

 

Needless to say, Claire skips by the reception on her way out, not bothering to book a second appointment.

 

\--

 

So yeah, officially, she’s on a temporary leave of the _we’ll see you in a couple of months; in the meantime, try not to have a total meltdown_  variety.

 

Unofficially, though, she’s drifting, no longer moored to a bottom line or driven by a self-perpetuating list of objectives. For the first time in nine years, there’s absolutely nothing for her to do. It feels like she’s missing a vital organ. And _fuck_ if it doesn't scare her shitless.

 

\--

 

Despite their pact to stick together ( _for survival_ ), she and Owen inevitably get separated. The last time Claire had seen him was at the official press conference. They’d stood side-by-side, a united front before the mob of reporters and their barrage of questions ( _Who--? What--? How--? **Why?**_ ), blinking against the rapidly flashing bulbs.

 

But then Karen’s suddenly on the phone, demanding that she come spend what’s left of the holidays in Minnesota, followed by an email from Zara’s sister, asking if she would please say a few words at the funeral.

 

Owen, meanwhile, gets carted off to InGen’s San Diego headquarters despite his vociferous protestations. Apparently, there’s some leftover Velociraptor business that needed to be taken care of. (“There _may_ have been one or two or ten status reports I've forgotten and/or neglected to file. Or even complete, actually.” At this, Claire had merely rolled her eyes.)

 

She tries (and fails quite pathetically) to convince herself that this distance is a good thing. A relationship born of trauma – or that, at the very least, is a trivial by-product of one – probably isn’t the healthiest. (The fact that Evelyn likely would’ve agreed gives her little comfort.)

 

But that doesn’t stop her from missing him – yes, she’s woman enough to acknowledge this. She’s come to think of him as a touchstone of sorts, a physical embodiment of those eighteen nightmarish hours and proof that she really had made it out alive. As odd and ridiculous as it might sound, it’s comforting to know that she isn’t the only person in this world to have stood bathed in the foul stench of the Indominus’s breath and lived to tell about it. Without him, none of it seems real, as if it’s all simply a figment of her imagination, perhaps the remnants of a horrible nightmare that she just can’t shake.

 

He's a reminder that however mortal or weak or _small_ she may be in comparison, she isn’t alone in that respect.

 

\--

  

Claire decides it’s high time she finally heed some of Simon’s eccentric but well-meaning advice. Starting with the one involving the sun and her intentionally exposing herself to it. It’s not a particularly popular - or smart - thing to do among fair-skinned individuals such as herself (she'd spent much of her adolescence learning this lesson), but the Pacific Ocean is basically her second backyard, the beach a literal hop, skip and a jump from her apartment, and she’d be a fool not to take advantage of it.

 

Besides, who couldn’t use an extra dose of vitamin D every now and again?

 

It’s a Sunday afternoon when she ambles down to the beach, a massive tote hanging from the crook of her elbow (shiny and slick with two coats of SPF 100) and hair flattened under a wide-brimmed hat (an extra precautionary measure). She makes a beeline for an unoccupied palm, reaching it seconds before a group of stoned banjo players can circle around it for a three-hour jam session. Smiling apologetically (though none of them seem too torn up), she quickly sets up camp and pulls out the book she’d brought – some tearjerker Karen had stuffed into her Christmas stocking. She cracks it open, mentally preparing herself for whatever mindless fluff she might encounter—

 

And proceeds to read none of it, her attention diverted by a boy no more than ten hurrying past her, kicking up sand in his haste to reach the ocean. Twisting from the torso, he shouts an impatient “Come on!” to a frazzled-looking couple trailing after him.

 

Amused, Claire follows the trio with her eyes, her vision suddenly filling with sand, ocean and the sea of people milling about. Every corner of the beach seems to buzz with activity, life unfolding everywhere she looks.

 

The book lies in her lap, open but forgotten. As far as pastimes went, people-watching had always topped the list for Claire.

 

She is, by nature, an observer. (Karen likes to joke that she could’ve made a killing as a private investigator had she decided to forgo babysitting a bunch of dinosaurs in a theme park for a living.) She enjoys stealing little glimpses into other people’s lives, found them fascinating – even if they were in fact rather mundane and far from extraordinary – simply because they weren’t her own. It’s not a secret or anything, and Claire certainly feels no shame in it. Everyone has a guilty pleasure (some God-awful reality TV show usually); hers just happened to be watching strangers go about their daily lives.

 

(Sometimes, alone and on the patio of her favourite bistro, it's about the stories, the narratives that a person's behaviour and actions told. Other times, especially in the dimly lit control room of Jurassic World, wondering about the ins and outs of strangers’ lives took a backseat to making sure they were all accounted for and out of harms way.)

 

And as much as it is an indulgence, it's also a reflex. It just happens - with little to no conscious effort, without warning or preamble - completely indiscriminate of the time and place.

 

So a crowded beach on a Sunday afternoon? Totally fair game.

 

She continues her survey of the throng, eyes sweeping the boardwalk and ocean, trying to commit to memory the faces of skateboarders and cyclists, swimmers and sunbathers. (It’s an impossible task, the faces blurring and then bleeding into each other.) Two questions sit perched on the tip of her tongue ( _Live count? Incidents?_ ) and she wishes (not for the first time) that Lowery and Vivian were there with her.

 

\--

 

Claire returns the next day and then the day after that. (Both times, she deliberately leaves her book at home.) She begins to go often enough - and like clockwork - that the locals know to steer clear of the palm near the frozen banana stand at half past one in the afternoons. It becomes routine, a substitute of sorts to her daily visits to the Jurassic World control room.

 

It calms her, soothes her in its familiarity. Because whether it’s the beach or a dinosaur theme park, monitoring people was monitoring people. Context made no difference.

 

More than that, the activity itself preoccupies her, feeds her need to keep busy, to be doing _something_. Because lately, without a park to manage, investors to flatter and employees to oversee, she’s been feeling restless, maybe even a little melancholy.

 

(“You know what this is, don’t you?” Karen’s knowing voice crackles over the line.

 

Claire sighs, slipping sunglasses over her eyes, as if that might somehow prevent her sister’s shrewd gaze from penetrating her soul and getting an eyeful of her deepest and darkest secrets. “No, Karen, I don’t. But I have a feeling you’re about to enlighten me.”

 

“Empty nest syndrome,” comes the clipped, preamble-less response.

 

“That,” Claire takes a sip of her drink, eyes rolling, “is absolutely ridiculous.”

 

“Is it, though?” Before Claire can respond, Karen ploughs ahead. “You should get a dog. It might help fill the void.”

 

Claire scoffs. “You know just as well as I do that I won’t have any time for a dog once I’m back at work. And that could be any day now.” _One could only hope._  She brushes imaginary sand off her towel. “But even if that weren’t the case, you can’t fill a void that wasn’t there to begin with. The park wasn't like my kid or anything.” _Right?_

 

“Would you just think about it anyway? For my sake?” Karen implores. “I worry about you, you know. More so now, given all that’s happened.”

 

A lump builds in Claire’s throat. “I’m fine," she says, voice thicker than she'd intended. A weary sigh carries over from the other end of the line, her sister likely neither convinced nor placated by the perfunctory – and admittedly weak – assurance. She clears her throat. “Or at least I think I’m getting there.”)

 

\--

 

Here’s the truth: in a lot of ways, Jurassic World had been Claire’s baby.

 

She’d been there at its inception, had overseen the installation of rides and corrals, had even headed the hiring committee. She’s lost count of all the hatchings she’s attended – enough, perhaps, that she could’ve imprinted on each and every animal on the park grounds if she’d been so inclined. (Claire knows for a fact that she’d been present at all four of the raptors’ births, recalls with great clarity the childlike wonderment that had lit Owen’s eyes, his face pressed up against the incubator, as each emerged from her shell.) She’d made sure that the fifty-some tonnes of food made it into the belly of every creature that called the park its home. And if that weren't enough, she’d had actual humans to tend to: visitors she couldn't let collapse from dehydration or roll off a cliff in a human hamster ball.

 

For the last nine years, she'd devoted her life to securing Jurassic World's survival and future, to ensuring that its legacy outlive them all.

 

Yeah, there was no escaping it. She'd been a parent all right, and a full-time one at that.

  

\--

 

As absurd as it sounds, Claire almost, kind of misses Lowery. Despite his questionable choices in wardrobe and facetious disposition, she thinks she may have - at some point and in spite of herself - grown  _accustomed_  to his presence. Including his offbeat sense of humour (she may have chuckled at a lame joke once or twice), and especially his snarky quips and rambling commentary (there's a lot of dead air without him around to broadcast his internal monologue in real time).

 

There's too much tranquility and calm in her life - she never thought she'd see the day when _this_ would be the cause of her distress, yet here it was - without his trademark chaos and disorder to act as counterbalance. (What was it that he'd said? - _Just enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy._ )

 

Yeah, she definitely misses him, no _almost, kind of_ about it. The realization is at once both humbling and horrifying.

 

With a little digging (a call to Masrani Corp's head of HR, email exchanges with a couple in-the-know contacts), Claire manages to track Lowery down to an address in Anaheim. She dusts off an old eBay account from her college days and proceeds to spend an entire day and then some (it's not like she has anything better to do) scouring the site for bargains on original Jurassic Park memorabilia. She keeps tabs on multiple auctions, compulsively refreshing the browser every ten minutes, and then bids like a madwoman with one minute remaining. Four failed bids later, she nabs a mint condition, fully authenticated (she'd badgered the seller into posting a photo of the authentication label) Jurassic Park baseball cap for $85. It's pricey for headwear, but a steal by comparison.

 

Claire honestly doesn't know what compels her to do any of this. Sentimentality, maybe.

 

A week later, she receives a call from a number she doesn’t recognize.

 

“Hello?”

 

"Does this mean we're friends? Is this your version of a friendship bracelet, just less bracelet-y and more awesome?"

 

Claire rolls her eyes, smiling in spite of herself. "Yes, Lowery, this means we're friends.”

 

“But I didn’t get you anything. Isn't the point of friendship bracelets to exchange them?”

 

“Don’t worry about it.”

 

They set a date to catch up over drinks. “On me,” Lowery adds jovially, “since we’re friends now and everything.”

 

\--

 

After much deliberation (and multiple pro/con lists), Claire decides a dog might not be such a bad idea.

 

Truth be told, she feels she'd had very little - if not no - choice in the matter. And she's pretty sure that had been by design, her sister having masterminded the whole thing. Since their conversation, the idea had been niggling at the back of Claire's mind, quiet but persistent. In fact, she nearly succumbs to the impulse on a number of occasions. But it's Gray that ultimately gets her to make the leap. Because the seed may have been planted by Karen, but it’s Gray that does all of the grunt work, extolling the virtues of canine companionship in that endearingly exuberant way of his, his excitement contagious. She all but agrees to get _him_ a dog by the end of their Skype session. Her sister knew what she was doing, Claire would give her that.

 

So after a little research, she visits a shelter in West LA.

 

And _of course_ Owen volunteers there.

 

(“You want to adopt a dog,” he says slowly, as if to weigh the idea on his tongue, a brow raised in incredulity.

 

Claire bristles a little, arms folding across her chest defensively. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of another living thing.”

 

Owen shakes his head. “No, of course you can," he backtracks. "That’s not what I meant.”

 

She waits for him to elaborate, fingers gripping her biceps like a vice.

 

He shrugs, one corner of his lips lifting in a sheepish half-smile. “I just figured you were more of a cat person.”

 

She blinks. “Oh.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“My sister thinks I’m suffering from empty nest syndrome,” Claire blurts. She promptly drops her eyes to the collar of his V-neck, the rims of her ears suddenly on fire.

 

“O-kay.” Amusement drags out the last syllable.

 

God, this was a _dumb_ idea. To hell with Karen. She doesn’t need a dog. Because whoever even heard being a parent to a _theme park_? Ridiculous. She can’t believe she even entertained the idea. She’s _fine_. And whatever loneliness or self-pity she feels from time to time she’s already well on her way to addressing, what with her daily people-watching thing and bi-weekly Skype calls with her nephews and – and –-

 

“So,” Owen interrupts her train of thought. Claire's gaze lifts back up to his eyes. “Wanna come meet some dogs?”

 

She smiles.)

 

\--

 

As it turns out, Owen lives just two miles – a fifteen-minute run, a detail she knows only because he’s made a habit of showing up at her door at 8:30 every Tuesday and Thursday morning to drag her along for his second wind – north of her.

 

After completing those neglected reports and helping shut down the raptor program (at his insistence – InGen was under the delusion that there was something left to salvage), he’d migrated the short distance up north to settle in Venice. It suits him, of course, the vibrant neighbourhood, the heat and the ocean. (His collection of board shorts also have no trouble fitting in.) It surprises her that she’d never spotted him during her countless outings to the beach, hours spent cataloguing faces and the goings-on around her. Maybe it’s because his was the last face she’d expected to see.

 

(Or maybe it was that she wasn’t looking closely enough.)

 

Claire ends up adopting a two-year-old Border Collie mix named Frank. Unbeknownst to her, he and Owen come as a package deal and the two of them quickly become the new constants in her life. Her people-watching excursions are fewer and less frequent, trips outside the walls of her apartment less and less a practice in solitude. When she’s out, she’s distracted either by Frank or Owen or some combination of the two. There’s no time for headcounts and assessing every detail of her surroundings.

 

But the compulsion is still there, itchy and ever-present. It’s a difficult habit to break.

 

\--

 

As expected, her and Owen's relationship - or whatever label most aptly describes an association between two people who've kissed once, co-parent a dog and spend far too much free time together - consists primarily of non-stop bickering, eye-rolling and occasionally wanting to push the other into oncoming traffic. Strangers give them a wide berth on sidewalks; Zach, Gray and Karen (the traitors) furtively shoot each other knowing looks when they think she isn’t looking.

 

But they're also strangely comfortable with each other. She doesn't know if it's because they've been through a harrowing ordeal together or because they've changed as a result of it (because let's face it, the Claire from a few months ago would not have been okay with a mini-food fight breaking out in her kitchen). Either way, it's gotten to the point where it's normal to find them killing time at her favourite coffee shop, taking dumb Buzzfeed quizzes together--

 

_“Seventy-two?”_

_“According to this, yeah, you’re seventy-two years old.”_

 

_“ **Seventy-two**?”_

 

_“Well, what'd you expect when you picked Paul Newman as your celebrity crush?”_

_Claire harrumphs. “I wasn't given much to work with, was I? I mean, who would_ _you have_ _picked with Zac Efron and Justin Bieber as your only other alternatives?”_

_“Efron,” Owen answers without hesitation. At her incredulous look, he shrugs. “Lesser of two evils.”_

 

\--and sharing moments of honesty over beer and tacos at some hole-in-the-wall joint he’d discovered his first week in town.

 

_“It’s just – ” Owen starts when she succeeds in wheedling out whatever has him looking so uncharacteristically pensive. “Blue. I worry about her sometimes - okay, all the time.” A sigh. “She's out there, alone, without her sisters.” He stares unseeingly into his empty bottle. “Without me.”_

All in all, it’s the weirdest non-relationship Claire has ever been in.

 

\--

 

Their second kiss is about as public and unexpected as their first, just a smidge less _fuck, the world is on the brink of collapse and you just saved my ass from a deathly pterodactyl pecking, so allow me to demonstrate my gratitude and/or immense attraction by kissing the living shit out of you_.

 

It happens at a Clippers’ game (“You, a basketball fan?” Owen asks, eyes bulging from their sockets and not once straying from the two courtside tickets in her hand. “My brain cannot compute.” Claire huffs, brow lifting haughtily. “What? A girl can’t like basketball? I’ll have you know I played all through high school and was  _this close_ to a scholarship.” That just about sends him into cardiac arrest.) during the break before the final quarter. The kiss-cam is panning over the rows of spectators, searching for a recognizable face and his/her plus one to entertain the packed stadium with a little lip action.

 

As luck would have it, there’s a shortage of Knowles-Carters and teen heartthrobs with their pop star girlfriends in attendance that night. So the kiss-cam operator has no choice but to make do with the next best thing: the Dino-mic Duo (the press’s words, not hers – though she would totally be the Batman to his Robin). As soon as the camera locks in on them, faces projected onto the Jumbotron suspended over their heads, a hush falls over the stadium. Which was preferable to the collective murmur of recognition that follows. (“ _Wait, isn’t she_ —?” “ _Fuck, that’s totally the guy that_ —”)

 

Claire shrinks in her seat, shielding her flushed face with her half-empty beer. Never has she coveted cuttlefish DNA more than she does in that moment – camouflaging into her seat was suddenly very appealing.

 

As she’s lamenting the cuttlefish-less state of her genome (while simultaneously assessing the feasibility of just slide-shimmying off her seat and booking it to the nearest exit without making too much of a scene), Owen turns to her, shoulders shrugging as if to say _what can you do_. “Gotta give the people what they want.” His voice is easygoing and nonchalant, the words bordering on flippant, but his eyes cause her breath to catch – much too green with quiet intensity and surprising earnestness.

 

And suddenly he’s swooping in, capturing her lips with his own.

 

Through she knows for a fact that it’s the press of his lips that causes the thudding in her chest, the shiver down her spine a response to the fingers at the base of her skull, she can’t tell if the dull roar she hears is from the crowd cheering around them or the blood rushing in her ears.

 

There’s no either or; it’s both.

 

\--

 

_It’s all about control with you._  Claire's finding that's less and less the case these days.

 

And truth be told, it’s oddly kind of liberating.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the liberal (excessive) use of parentheses!


End file.
